City of Madrid
Coordinated emergency response raises public safety
Overview
The Need
Following the 2004 Madrid train bomb-
ings, the city sought to radically improve
its emergency response capability.
The Solution
Madrid teamed with IBM and
IBM Business Partner Indra to create the
CISEM command center, which com-
bines information from many sources
including video feeds, field reports and
mobile computers.
What Makes it Smarter
Because of insight generated by a com-
prehensive, real-time view of events
across the city, emergency managers can
better assess needs, prioritize and coor-
dinate actions, and proactively deploy
assets to address—and potentially
prevent—multiple, complex incidents.
The Result
“The most innovative aspect of the
center is its scope—the integration of all
the people involved and the systems
they use.”
— Fernando Garcia Ruiz, head of innova-
tion and development, Department of
Security, City of Madrid
to a new level
On March 11, 2004, Madrid suffered a major terrorist attack when
several commuter trains were bombed. As with the 9/11 attacks in the
United States, this tragic incident highlighted the need for greater
coordination among first responders. “The different emergency
entities—the police, the fire department, the ambulance service and
the mobile police—intervened independently, and all of them had
disparate communication systems and technologies,” says Fernando
Garcia Ruiz, head of innovation and development, Department of
Security for the City of Madrid. There was no way to organize a uni-
fied response to incidents, and there was a lack of centralized com-
mand and control.
A key lesson was that more than one major incident can happen
simultaneously, and emergency assets may be needed in more than one
place. Different incidents may be related, or have nothing to do with
one another—without a clear overall picture, it may be impossible to
tell if there is an important pattern emerging. This potential for com-
plexity poses a significant challenge for emergency managers. They not
only need to coordinate activity, but also require a thorough under-
standing of everything happening in the metropolitan area so as to
properly allocate limited resources to provide the best response to
each incident. In addition, proactive measures such as limiting access
to impacted areas, or crowd and traffic control for public events, has to
be included in the mix.
The need, therefore, was not only for top-down coordination, but also
for the ability to capture and integrate information to give managers
the understanding and insight required to quickly make the right
decisions.
A centralized model for command and control
In the aftermath of the March bombings, the Madrid City Council
took action to better protect the public by commissioning an advanced
emergency command center for the city—the Centro Integrado de
Seguridad y Emergencias de Madrid, or CISEM.

Business Benefits
● Unified view of incident data enables
faster, better decision making with the
ability to handle multiple, complex situ-
ations simultaneously
● Emergency response time reduced by
25 percent
● Enables end-to-end coordination of
emergency and municipal assets
● Robust, wireless infrastructure con-
nects diverse first responder agencies
with shared, interoperable equipment
and protocols
● SOA infrastructure seamlessly
integrates agencies, systems and
information
Smarter Public Safety: Faster, more precise emergency response
Instrumented
Interconnected
Intelligent
The mission was ambitious, but clear-cut: reduce emergency response
time, integrate information, standardize procedures and protocols, pro-
vide seamless coordination and planning, enable shared use of
resources, optimize information management and promote prevention
through better planning.
IBM Business Partner Indra, a leading regional systems integrator spe-
cializing in the public sector, teamed with IBM to provide the inte-
grated, service-oriented IT infrastructure that would make CISEM a
reality, along with needed business process transformation to enable
coordination among all of the stakeholders.
Building an emergency infrastructure from the
ground up
“The key to CISEM is integration—of information, systems, data
sources and people,” Garcia says, “but it was a challenge. Not only do
we have to integrate all the applications currently used by the different
entities, but we also have to integrate other external organizations, like
Madrid 112, the video surveillance center, and the M30 highway con-
trol center.”
Because each of the first responder agencies had its own communica-
tion technology, a common mobile infrastructure had to be deployed.
Most vehicles, from police cars to ambulances to fire engines, are
equipped with mobile wireless computers or PDAs that are connected
to CISEM. The mobile infrastructure is critical; it provides true inter-
operability among the various agencies and also enables a two-way
interchange of information—which gives managers vital, on-the-scene
input that helps them develop a better understanding of what is hap-
pening in the field.
Information from first responders, the public, video
surveillance, traffic control and other sources is fed into
the CISEM system.
CISEM integrates information, people, processes and
systems to enable better coordination and situational
awareness for first responders.
A holistic, real-time view of incidents gives commanders an
understanding of how complex emergencies affect the city
as a whole, enabling them to more rapidly and effectively
assess and respond to incidents, and thus better protect the
public.
 The effective coordination of responders depends on reliable commu-
nications, so close attention was paid to creating a reliable way to keep
Solution Components
all agencies in touch. A multilayered, redundant communications
Software infrastructure links to existing telephony systems, VoIP, satellite com-
● IBM DB2® Everyplace® munications, a private radio network and 3G wireless networks to
● IBM Tivoli® Directory Integrator ensure continuous communication. IBM WebSphere® Everyplace®
● IBM WebSphere® Everyplace Connection Manager provides seamless, reliable, secure access to
Connection Manager
CISEM resources by automatically selecting the best available network
● IBM WebSphere Everyplace
and encrypting all communications. IBM Tivoli® Directory Integrator
Deployment
● IBM WebSphere Integration Developer
adds an additional layer of access security.
● IBM WebSphere MQ
● IBM WebSphere Process Server CISEM’s need to maintain consistency across all emergency resources
● IBM WebSphere Transformation makes the rapid development, integration and uniform rollout of infor-
Extender mation and applications essential, so IBM helped build a flexible, pow-
IBM Business Partner
erful SOA platform to enable it. New information flows and business
● Indra processes are built and managed using IBM WebSphere Integration
Developer and IBM WebSphere Process Server. Dissemination to field
units takes place quickly and easily, thanks to IBM DB2® Everyplace
and IBM WebSphere Everyplace Deployment, with an underlying
support layer that includes IBM WebSphere MQ and IBM WebSphere
Transformation Extender for system messaging and data formatting.
This robust software platform helps CISEM managers adapt to fast-
changing needs without disruption to vital services—a key capability in
fulfilling their core mission of protecting the public.

Flexibility and insight

Commanders are now
able to understand how
complex and/or multi-
ple incidents affect the
entire region.
The combination of forward-looking system design and end-to-end
integration gives emergency managers in Madrid the tools needed to
not only deal with today’s threats, but also handle rapidly evolving situ-
ations and technologies as they emerge. Any sensor input—video, data
or voice—from any source can be readily incorporated into the data
stream and accessed by anyone who needs it.
Situational awareness is now at an unprecedented level. Not only do
commanders at CISEM understand the full situation, but those in the
field are also made aware of the status of other teams and resources.

This single, unified view of status and events reduces confusion and
enables far faster and more effective decision making. Managers are
now better able to deploy the right assets the first time, reducing
response time by 25 percent.

Perhaps most significant, though, is the entirely new dimension that

CISEM has given to emergency management. Commanders are now
able to understand how complex and/or multiple incidents affect the
entire region, and can allocate and deploy emergency resources in a
truly coordinated and effective manner that takes into account all of
Madrid’s needs, not just those of a single incident.
In addition to CISEM’s new capabilities, Fernando Garcia concludes
by emphasizing that “CISEM is built for change. We have more flexi-
bility to innovate in our day-to-day operations, but we are also better
equipped for any major challenges the future may have in store. The
beauty of it is that it allows us to make incremental changes without
ever interrupting our emergency operations.”

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Produced in the United States of America
March 2010
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